In a previous article, I explored a deceptively simple lesson from Joseph Stiglitz: markets are not natural phenomena. They are shaped by institutions, laws, policies, regulations, norms and power. But that insight raises another question. If markets are shaped by us, how should we shape them?

Stiglitz’s work offers valuable normative insights for thinking about that question. His account of progressive capitalism starts from a simple premise: “the economy is supposed to serve society, not the other way around” (2024, p.264). A good economy should therefore serve human flourishing and shared prosperity. Drawing on his wider discussion of power, governance, collective action and institutional design, I identify three ideas that seem particularly relevant to the translation industry: rebalancing power, governance and collective action.

1. Rebalancing power

Stiglitz places power at the centre of economic analysis. Markets cannot be understood simply as interactions between individuals freely exchanging goods and services on equal terms. People and organisations enter economic relationships with very different resources, information, viable alternatives and capacities to influence the terms of exchange. Asking whether an arrangement is voluntary therefore tells us little about how power is distributed within it.

For translation and interpreting, this suggests a different set of questions. How should power be distributed, and what institutions are needed to rebalance it? Who determines prices and contractual conditions, and who can realistically negotiate or walk away? Who controls access to work and information? Who has the resources and institutional access to influence governments, universities and professional organisations, or to shape dominant narratives about the industry and its future? And, importantly, what countervailing sources of power exist?

Stiglitz argues that rebalancing power requires both constraining excessive corporate power and strengthening workers’ power, including through collective organisation. The point is not to eliminate markets or differences between economic actors. It is to recognise that concentrated power can restrict the freedom of others. This gives us a different way of thinking about professional agency. Telling an individual translator to negotiate better may sometimes be useful, but negotiation does not take place in an institutional vacuum. Its outcome depends partly on the alternatives available to each party, their access to information, their economic resources and their respective bargaining power. A good translation industry should therefore not depend on individual practitioners overcoming significant power asymmetries on their own. It should contain institutions capable of counterbalancing those inequalities of power.

2. Governance

The second insight concerns governance. Stiglitz provides a wonderfully straightforward way of thinking about it: governance concerns who makes what decisions and what the objectives are (2024, p.270). Both parts of that formulation matter.

Applied to translation and interpreting, the first question immediately opens up a much wider field of inquiry. Who determines contractual conditions and remuneration? Who establishes standards and defines quality? Who decides what constitutes professionalism and which qualifications matter? Who shapes the adoption of new technologies and determines how data are collected and used? Who participates in decisions about the future of the profession, and who does not? These are questions about more than consultation. They concern the distribution of decision-making power within the institutions that shape the market.

The second part of Stiglitz’s formulation is just as important: what are the objectives? An institution can be extremely efficient at achieving an objective without that objective necessarily producing desirable outcomes for everyone affected by it. Are our institutions organised primarily around reducing costs, increasing productivity or maximising profits? Or do their objectives also encompass service quality, accessibility, sustainable livelihoods, public value, human flourishing and shared prosperity? These objectives need not always conflict, but when they do, governance determines whose interests receive priority.

Questions of governance therefore lead back to questions of power. This is why transparency, accountability and checks and balances matter. Stiglitz does not imagine a good economy as one dominated either by corporations or by the state. He envisages a plural institutional landscape in which governments, businesses, unions, cooperatives, civil-society organisations and other institutions can provide checks upon concentrations of power. Perhaps we should think about the translation industry in similar terms. The question is not simply whether translators and interpreters are occasionally consulted, but whether the institutions governing their working lives give them meaningful opportunities to influence decisions that affect them, whether competing interests are visible, and whether those exercising power can be held accountable.

3. Collective action

Here, collective action should not be understood narrowly as industrial action or strikes. Stiglitz uses the term much more broadly to describe the many ways in which people organise and act together to pursue objectives that they cannot necessarily achieve individually. As he explains:

“Collective action can take many forms. Examples of collective action include NGOs, unions, church groups, producer and consumer cooperatives, class-action lawsuits, conservation societies, and a plethora of other groups working to advance causes they believe in” (2024, p.274).

The principle behind this is simple: people can accomplish together what they cannot accomplish alone. An individual translator can decide to acquire a new skill, but cannot individually regulate a market. An interpreter can reject an assignment, but cannot individually change the distribution of bargaining power across a public service outsourcing system. A freelancer can negotiate a rate, but cannot individually address market concentration. A practitioner can learn to use artificial intelligence, but cannot individually determine how the productivity gains generated by technological change will be distributed across an industry.

This distinction does not diminish individual agency. Advice about developing skills, specialising, negotiating, diversifying or adapting to technological change may be entirely appropriate. I argue that the problem arises when an individual response is presented as the solution to a problem that the individual has little power to change. We therefore need to distinguish between what practitioners can reasonably be expected to address individually and what requires institutions capable of collective action.

For Stiglitz, those institutions are deliberately plural. Collective action is not synonymous with government, nor does it require one particular organisational form. Governments, unions, professional organisations, cooperatives, civil-society organisations and other forms of association can enable people to pursue shared objectives and provide countervailing power where individual action is insufficient. The relevant question for translation and interpreting is therefore not simply whether such institutions exist, but whether they enable us to achieve collectively what individual practitioners cannot reasonably accomplish alone.

This also changes what I think we should expect from the institutions surrounding translation and interpreting. We should hold professional organisations, universities and policymakers accountable for the roles they play in shaping the market. End clients should be made aware of unfair practices where they occur. Unions and other representative organisations should provide meaningful mechanisms through which practitioners can exercise collective voice and power. Above all, we should resist the idea that every structural problem can be solved by asking individual translators and interpreters to adapt a little more.

Conclusion: From adapting to shaping

Taken together, these three insights provide a different way of thinking about the translation industry. Rebalancing power asks how power is distributed and what institutions might counter significant imbalances. Governance asks who makes what decisions and towards what objectives. Collective action asks how people and institutions should act together.

None of this suggests that individuals have no responsibility for their professional lives, nor that there is a single ideal institutional arrangement for every part of translation and interpreting. The point is simpler: the conditions of a market are not merely circumstances to which individuals must adjust. They are also outcomes of institutional arrangements that can be questioned, evaluated and changed.

We can therefore continue asking what skills translators and interpreters need, while also asking whether power within the market is appropriately distributed. We can discuss innovation while asking who participates in governing technological change and who benefits from the value it creates. We can encourage individual agency while recognising the limits of individual action. And we can discuss efficiency and productivity while still asking the more fundamental normative question: efficiency and productivity towards what ends, and for whose benefit?

Perhaps, then, we should stop talking about the future of translation and interpreting as though it were an extraterrestrial visitor that has suddenly landed among us, leaving us with no choice but to adapt to its arrival. If markets are shaped by institutions, rules and power, there are choices involved in shaping this one too. The question is not only what will the translation industry become, but what do we want it to become?

Drawing on these Stiglitzian insights, I argue that a good translation industry cannot be defined by one particular business model or institutional arrangement. It would be an industry in which economic activity serves human flourishing and shared prosperity; significant concentrations of power are subject to countervailing forces; governance is transparent, accountable and open to meaningful participation; collective institutions enable people to achieve what they cannot achieve alone; and institutional arrangements remain capable of learning, adaptation and scrutiny.

If markets are made, we do not have to treat the translation industry we have inherited as the only one possible.

In my next article, I put one of these principles into practice: holding institutions accountable for the roles they play in shaping the translation and interpreting sector. I will publish the findings of my investigation into relationships between UK universities and an interest group representing corporate actors in the industry.

About the Author:

Fardous Bahbouh is a researcher and broadcast interpreter specialising in the political economy of the translation and interpreting industry. She has established a substantial body of public-facing research and writing, combining policy analysis and critical commentary on inequality, labour rights and institutional accountability in translation and interpreting: Language Justice Reading List.

Blog Image:
Daniel Lloyd Blunk-Fernández on Unsplash

Bibliography:
Stiglitz, J. 2024. The Road to Freedom: Economics and the Good Society. Penguin Books Limited.